Alibaba Launches A100 Strategic Partnership Program – Business Wire

HANGZHOU, China–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Alibaba Group Holding Limited (NYSE: BABA) today announced the launch of
“A100,” a strategic partnership program that offers companies a holistic
one-stop solution to accelerate their digital transformation. Members of
A100 will develop a deep and longstanding working relationship with
Alibaba businesses across multiple functions and platforms to co-create
the best values that are efficient, effective and sustainable in the
digital era.

The A100 initiative was announced at the inaugural “Alibaba ONE Business
Conference” in Hangzhou. The name, “A100,” symbolizes Alibaba’s goal of
providing digitized solutions to a large number of companies.

The A100 program is built on the “Alibaba Operating System,” which was
showcased at the conference. The creation of the Alibaba Operating
System is indeed a part of company’s natural progression from an
e-commerce provider to an integrated global technology company. As
Alibaba has expanded its business from pure e-commerce into digital
entertainment and local services, the power of its infrastructure has
grown to cover sales, logistics, supply chain optimization, payments,
marketing and a wide range of supporting services all powered by
cloud-based technologies. With those strong cloud-computing
capabilities, the infrastructure is able to process a massive flow of
data, offering insights and analytics instrumental to better meeting
customer needs and growing their business. New Retail is a key interface
through which businesses can tap into the Alibaba Operating System.

The Alibaba ONE Business Conference also highlighted the success of New
Retail – a model pioneered by Alibaba to integrate online and offline
retail through digitizing store-based operations. New Retail has gained
strong ground in the past two years, with over 1,200 brands having
digitized and upgraded more than 200,000 offline stores into “smart
stores.”

Alibaba is now offering the Alibaba Operating System to companies of all
sizes through the A100 program, which lets them choose from an
exhaustive menu of services to enhance their business operations.
Alibaba will establish a cross-platform integrated account-serving team
to supervise the implementation of A100 and will start with partners
already in the company’s ecosystem. The program will gradually expand to
other brands looking to optimize their digital operations.

“With over 600 million monthly active users and nearly 30 business units
specializing in enterprise services including tech-driven retail, mobile
payment, digital marketing, media entertainment, IT infrastructure and
more, Alibaba is the leading partner for businesses within China and
around the world to capitalize on the growing consumption by China’s
middle class. The A100 initiative, powered by the Alibaba Operating
System, will be a one-stop shop for businesses to access a comprehensive
range of enterprise services in the digital era,” said Daniel Zhang, CEO
of Alibaba Group.

“Many partners have gained enhanced operational efficiency and business
growth through a deep partnership with Alibaba. Synergies generated by
our ecosystem are creating new avenues for sales and distribution, and
catalysing product innovation to capture opportunities in lifestyle
upgrades across China. We look forward to adding many more global and
Chinese domestic companies to the A100 strategic partnership program in
the near future,” added Zhang.

One of the early successes of the Alibaba cross-platform partnership is
Nestlé. While strengthening its core B2C business through its Tmall
flagship store, Tmall Supermarket and Rural Taobao, Nestlé has recently
expanded into new Alibaba channels, such as Lingshoutong, FRESHIPPO
(previously known as Hema) supermarket and RT-Mart. In addition, Nestlé
has established a strong digitization-focused collaboration with Alibaba
on a number of projects based on market and category insight and
consumer understanding generated from various platforms available in the
ecosystem. In 2018, Nestlé signed a strategic partnership with Cainiao,
the logistics arm of Alibaba Group, which enabled Nestlé to consolidate
four distributors serving the Alibaba-related business into one and
introducing the “One Set” inventory system to fulfill online orders. As
a result, Nestlé can fully leverage Cainiao’s intelligence to sort
products and manage inventories according to consumers’ preferences in
different regions, reducing the proportion of cross-region parcels and
speeding up deliveries.

In August 2018, Alibaba and Starbucks formed a deep, strategic New
Retail partnership that enabled a seamless Starbucks experience
and transformed the coffee industry in China. Starbucks collaborates
across key businesses within the Alibaba ecosystem, including China’s
leading on-demand food delivery platform Ele.me, FRESHIPPO supermarket,
Tmall, Taobao and Alipay. Starbucks delivery program is today available
across 2,000 stores in 30 cities in China in partnership with Ele.me.
Starbucks also partners with FRESHIPPO supermarket to create “Star
Kitchens” specifically designed for Starbucks delivery order
fulfillment, further expanding delivery capabilities. In December 2018,
Starbucks launched its first virtual store in China powered by
technology from Alibaba Group, providing a unified, one-stop digital
experience across the Starbucks app and mobile apps within the Alibaba
ecosystem.

About Alibaba Group

Alibaba Group’s mission is to make it easy to do business anywhere and
the company aims to achieve sustainable growth for 102 years. For the
fiscal year ended March 31, 2018, the company reported revenues of
US$39.9 billion.